'Now will I be a Turke': Performing Ottoman Identity in
Thomas Goffe's The Courageous Turk

In the past several years, scholars have devoted increasing
attention to representations of the Near East and of Persian, Moorish,
or Turkish characters in early modern English drama. Many of these
studies have examined the cultural, political, and economic encounters
between the English and Islamic or quasi-Islamic others, and the ways in
which early modern English writers constituted their own identity
through representations of the other. In particular, critics such as
Daniel Vitkus have focused on the permeability of the boundaries between
the ideological constructs of East and West, and the hybrid identity
assumed by Englishmen who ventured into what he calls the
'multicultural Mediterranean'. Thus, English identity was
constituted not only in antithetical contrast to Near Eastern cultures,
but also by the possibility of assimilation into those cultures--of
'turning Turk'.

But what happens when playwrights attempt to reverse this
perspective, when the world of the play itself--its setting and most of
its characters--turns Turk? Several early modern English plays center
around Turkish characters and settings, so that these characters occupy
the position of the subject and not the position of the other. Placing
the cardboard villains of Renaissance drama in the position of the
protagonists forces the playwright to develop their complexity and make
them more sympathetic. If the play is almost entirely populated by
Turks, they cannot all be the same, and they cannot all spout moral
nonsense; they must have debates, and the debates must have some merit
on either or both sides.

Playwrights, I argue, use this shift of perspective to dramatize a
sense of radical indeterminacy, not just about English or Turkish
national identity but about human identity more broadly. For this
purpose, they exploit both the cultural alterity and the stereotypical
conventionality of the stage Turk and related figures such as the Moor.
In general, these figures tend to share certain stereotypical qualities:
they are prone to outbursts of both violent and erotic passion, their
passions are changeable and difficult to control, and they are capable
of extreme cruelty. In Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, for example,
Aaron the Moor embodies the most negative versions of this stereotype.
Apart from his devotion to his illegitimate child, Aaron is
extravagantly evil. He concludes the play by repenting any good deeds he
may have inadvertently performed and wishing that he could have
committed ten thousand more evil deeds (5.3.185-90). (1) While
Aaron's adherence to Moorish stereotypes makes him fascinating as a
demonic embodiment of evil, it makes him less interesting as a human
being. As we would expect, his stereotypical characteristics reduce our
sense of him as a three-dimensional personality with a psychological
interiority that resembles our own experiences of ourselves and other
people.

Later in his career, however, Shakespeare uses Moorish stereotypes
to produce the opposite effect. In Othello, the title character's
psychological depth becomes apparent through his increasing conformity
to the stock character of the Moor. Under the influence of Iago and his
own insecurities, he grows jealous, vengeful, and cruel; he comes to be
ruled by his passions. Othello begins in a state where he transcends the
racist expectations of characters such as Brabantio, but he ends by
fulfilling them. Othello's closing speech recognizes this: as he
recounts his former slaying of 'a malignant and a turbaned
Turk' (5.2.353), Othello stabs himself and draws an analogy between
the two killings. He thereby identifies himself with Elizabethan
archetypes of the villainous Moor or Turk. Yet the process of
Othello's degeneration into a stereotype is precisely what produces
a sense of his humanity and inner complexity. Iago corrupts Othello only
because Othello has subconscious psychological vulnerabilities that stem
from his identity as a Moor.

Shakespeare is not unique in this respect. Several other
playwrights use these kinds of stereotypes (which should reduce
ambiguity and oversimplify the subject) to increase the unpredictability
and ambiguity of their characters' actions and the complexity of
their plays' commentary. In this paper, I examine the ways in which
Thomas Goffe's The Courageous Turk deploys Turkish stereotypes to
produce a more ambivalent and nuanced exploration of the relationships
between passion and restraint, and between Turks and Christians.

The Courageous Turk has received relatively little attention from
modern critics, who have tended to assume that it lacks interpretive
interest. Matthew Dimmock notes that

plays like Thomas Goffe's The Raging Turke (1613-1618?) and The
Couragious Turke (1618), probably based directly on Knolles
[Richard Knolles's The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603)],
reflect closely the ideological investments of the latter's
chronicle history. Goffe's bombastic dramatization of Ottoman
dynastic disputes imitates the structure of Tamburlaine and
Selimus, yet replaces the ambiguities of these earlier plays with a
one-dimensional Ottoman stereotype--the 'subverter and sworn enemie
of the Christians, and of all that call upon Christ'. (2)

The word 'bombastic' appears in virtually every
commentary on Goffe's play, and the play's hyperbolic style,
derived ultimately from Tamburlaine, does not at first glance suggest a
nuanced approach to its subject matter. I would like to suggest,
however, that the play's dramatization of Ottoman stereotypes
actually develops interpretive complexities present in Knolles's
Generall Historie.

The Courageous Turk was first published posthumously in 1632 as The
couragious Turke, or, Amurath the First. Its plot does derive from
Knolles, but Goffe stitches together the histories of two different
rulers and attributes the actions of both to his protagonist Amurath:
acts 1-2 come from Knolles's account of Mahomet II (Mehmed II,
1432-1481), and acts 3-5 dramatize episodes from the life and death of
Amurath I (Murad I, 1319-1389). (3) Goffe also includes significant
verbal and situational echoes of Shakespeare's Othello (such as
Othello's temptation by Iago and Othello's murderous
contemplation of the sleeping Desdemona) and Hamlet (Amurath receives
analogues of the ghost's appearance to Hamlet and the play staged
for Claudius).

In Goffe's play, Amurath, king of the Turks, falls in love
with a Greek captive, Eumorphe (called Irene in Knolles). His tutor Lala
Schahin, feeling that Amurath is neglecting his kingly responsibilities
because of his love for Eumorphe, stages two masques and fakes a ghostly
visitation in order to convince Amurath to 'cut this Gordian thred,
and rend hence, / That putrid Wenne which cleaves unto thy flesh'
(2.4.38-9). (4) The chastened Amurath publicly beheads Eumorphe and
embarks on a program of military conquest. Meanwhile, we are introduced
to the Christians and one of their captains, the pious Cobelitz (Milos
Obilic), who tries to overcome the fear and infighting that plague the
Christian forces. After winning victories against the Christians,
Amurath attacks and defeats his son-in-law Aladin. Amurath threatens to
kill Aladin's children but then relents and makes peace with
Aladin. They proceed to 'Cassanoe's Plaines' in
'Servia' (5.1.136-8) to defeat the Christian army there (the
1389 Battle of Kosovo). Amurath receives a visitation from his demonic
ancestors, who warn him of his impending doom, but he ignores the
warning. The Turks defeat the Christians in battle, and Cobelitz is
apparently killed. However, when Amurath approaches to view his victory,
Cobelitz rises and manages to fatally stab Amurath with a dagger before
dying himself. Amurath's son Baiazet offers to share the monarchy
with his brother Jacup, but Schahin and others remind him that 'the
Turkish Lawes' require Jacup's death (5.4.143). Jacup upbraids
Baiazet and allows himself to be strangled, wrapping his own scarf about
his neck and offering the other end to Baiazet.

The most shocking event of the play, Amurath's sudden decision
to behead the woman he loves, evidently captured the imagination of
early modern writers and audiences, for it received multiple treatments
during the period. Besides being told by Knolles, the episode was
presumably recounted in a now lost play by George Peele, The Turkish
Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek, produced around 1594 and famously
alluded to in 2 Henry IV (2.4.154). It was also the subject of a 1611
poem by William Barksted entitled Hiren: or The faire Greeke. After
Goffe, the subject received other dramatic treatments, including
Lodowick Carlell's Osmond The Great Turk, Or The Noble Servant,
published in 1657.

By combining the love of Mahomet II with the military conquests of
Amurath I (and the murderous dynastic succession following his death), a
fusion not found in other sources or analogues, Goffe constructs a
protagonist whose potential for social action is defined by the opposing
demands of love and war, and both love and war become debased as Amurath
navigates his way through their conflicting imperatives. In these
respects, the play owes less to self-congratulatory anti-Ottoman
propaganda and more to the cynical philosophical disillusionment of
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

The conflict between love and war, a trope derived from the romance
and epic traditions and common in early modern drama, is significantly
inflected by placing it in an Ottoman context. In particular, Goffe
plays with the stereotype of the Turks as slaves to their amatory and
homicidal passions and thereby expands on an issue already present in
Knolles's Generall Historie. Knolles describes Mahomet II's
dalliance with Irene as the product of 'disordered affections,
where reason ruleth not the reine', a vice typical of the bombastic
stage Turk. Mahomet II appears to rise above this stereotype, presenting
his slaying of Irene as a supreme example of Stoic temperance and his
ability to 'bridle' his affections. However, Knolles comments
that he embarks on his subsequent military campaigns 'to discharge
the rest of his choller', suggesting that excess of passion, rather
than the proper restraint of passion, prompted the beheading of Irene.
(5) Goffe's dramatization of Knolles calls into further question
the relationship between the twin antitheses of love/war and
passion/restraint, as well as which of these four elements is more
distinctively Turkish.

Goffe's Amurath seems to be motivated by his stereotypically
Turkish passions as both a lover and a fighter. As the play opens,
Amurath hyperbolically declares his complete abandonment to the passion
of lust: 'Jove Ile outbrave thee! melt thy selfe in Lust ... Ile
not envie thee' (1.1.25-7). When Amurath turns to military
conquest, he displays equally intense passion. Schahin offers Amurath
the severed heads of Christians 'to adde freshe oyle unto thy hate,
/ And make it raise it selfe a greater flame' (3.2.13-14), and
Amurath responds, with gusto, 'O how it glads me thus to pash their
braines, / To rend their lockes, to teare these Infidels!'
(3.2.23-4). He repeatedly expresses a desire to drink Christian blood
(3.2.44, 4.2.89).

Both kinds of passion, however, draw condemnation from other
characters --including Turkish ones--which calls into question the idea
of a monolithic Turkish viewpoint. Eumorphe worries that Amurath's
amorous feelings resemble 'streames ... Which with outragious
swelling flow to fast' (1.1.334). Schahin laments that Amurath lies
'Drencht in the Lethe of Ignoble lust' (1.2.21). Amurath
himself recognizes that his passion for Eumorphe may lead his countrymen
to 'Call me a Lusty, Lazy, wanton, Coward!' (2.3.56). The
Turkish characters present Amurath's indulgence in love as lazy and
bestial, a failure to restrain the passions, a disease--a position more
congruent with Christian moralism than with stereotypes of the stage
Turk, and one the play might be genuinely advocating to its audience.
Amurath's sadistic violence receives condemnation mostly from
Cobelitz and the Christian forces. But Goffe also includes a scene where
Amurath threatens to kill his own grandchildren in retaliation for his
son-in-law Aladin's rebellion, and Amurath's daughter begs him
to restrain his fury.

The play's representation of Turkish passions is thus
complicated by the discourse of Stoic temperance and restraint, which
pervades the play and produces contradictory narratives about the moral
significance of Amurath's movement from lover to warrior via the
slaying of Eumorphe. Because Goffe's audience presumably opposed
the military expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe, and because
Goffe's play contains significant echoes of Shakespeare's
Othello, we might expect The Courageous Turk to be the tragedy of how
Amurath's trusted advisor Schahin wickedly deceives him into a
murderous rage, causing him to kill his true love and embark upon an
ultimately selfdestructive campaign of military conquest. And in fact,
the play does provide some support for this view of a virtuous Stoic
love shattered by intemperate violence. Eumorphe seems to be an
honourable woman who tries to bring out the best in Amurath. She
identifies beauty as 'the worst part of woman' (1.3.8) and
argues for a relationship based on 'obedience, duty, carefull
Love' (21). In response, Amurath vows to worship 'That vertue
in thy brest' (36). Eumorphe's description presents proper
love as a kind of restraint. The play begins with Amurath silencing the
'harsh notes' of the martial music to which he has entered
because his 'softer eares' have turned to love (1.1.1). He
thus frames love in terms of refraining from violence, which he
characterizes as a kind of servitude. Amurath says that 'we /
Scorne to be made the servile Ministers' of the Fates 'To cut
those threads' of people's lives (1.1.9-11).

Amurath's love also transforms his political attitudes,
causing him to reject the moral authority of kingship:

Turke, Amurath, slave nay something baser,
King! For all aery titles which the Gods
Have blasted man withall, to make them swell
With puft up honour, and ambitious wind,
This name of King holds greatest antipathy
With manly government.
(2.3.1-6)

Amurath invokes the Stoic virtue of masculine self-government and
suggests that it is antithetical to oriental despotism and military
conquest. When Amurath begins to waver in this resolve as he
contemplates, Othello-like, the sleeping Eumorphe, the intemperance and
hubris of his expression of ambition seem to demonstrate the truth of
his earlier statement:

Hence, then th'ambition of that furious youth,
Who knew not what a crime his rashnesse was!
I might orecome more Kingdomes; have more dominion
Enthrone my selfe an Emperor! oth' world,
I might! I might! Amurath thou mightst! (2.3.45-9)

He describes war as furious ambition and then becomes a furious
megalomaniac as he succumbs to that ambition. In this view of the play,
then, Schahin serves as an Iago figure who unleashes Amurath's
violent passions, resulting in the horrifying spectacle of
Eumorphe's beheading and Amurath's impious and doomed attempt
to conquer the world. Vitkus argues for this interpretation of the play:
'The irony is that Amurath, like Othello, has been
"wrought" upon by a male follower who succeeds in turning him
against the virtuous woman he loves and in bringing on his death and
damnation. In both cases, dramatic irony exposes the murderer's
misogynist code as damnable and deadly to himself'. (6)

The play, however, also incorporates a powerful contrary narrative,
in which Amurath's love represents a lack of self-control and
Schahin recalls him to his neglected duties and responsibilities as a
ruler. Schahin differs in important ways from evil counsellors such as
Iago. From his first soliloquy in 1.2, Schahin consistently claims to
act for the good of both Amurath and his empire--and this corresponds to
his portrayal in Knolles, who praises his 'graue aduice and
counsaile'. (7) Schahin's political advice in the play is
generally sensible; for example, he encourages a productive alliance
between Amurath and the Anatolian ruler 'The German Ogly'
(3.5.19). To Schahin, Amurath's love for Eumorphe is
'intemperate Lust' (2.4.4) and therefore she represents a
'putrid Wenne' (2.4.39) on Amurath that Schahin intends to
cure by instilling in Amurath Stoic self-discipline. Schahin presents
himself as a voice of temperance, advocating that Reason, 'that
best part of man', should

sway and rule each Passion.
Affections are good Servants: but if will
Make them once Master, theyle prove Tyrants still. (1.2.10-13) (8)

Although Schahin's judgment of Eumorphe is misogynist, and his
manipulation inspires misogyny in Amurath, Eumorphe herself agrees with
the principle that 'those are Kings, and Queenes whose brest's
secure / Like brazen walles, Lust's entrance not endure!'
(2.2.30-1). Seen from this perspective, Amurath's beheading of
Eumorphe is a supreme example of temperate behaviour and 'manly
government' (2.3.6). Amurath explicitly challenges his court to be
'temperate' enough to resist the temptation of Eumorphe's
beauty (2.5.34) and he justifies the beheading with the quasi-Stoic
maxim that 'he surely shall / That conquers first himselfe, soone
conquer all' (2.5.84-5).

Compared to its sources and analogues, the decapitation scene in
The Courageous Turk systematically de-emphasizes the notorious
emotionality of the Turks and highlights the issue of self-control. In
Knolles, the Sultan Mahomet presents Irene to his court, who had been
displeased with his dalliance, and 'they all rapt with an
incredible admiration to see so faire a thing, the like whereof they had
neuer before beheld, said all with one consent, That he had with greater
reason so passed the time with her, than any man had to find fault
therewith'. Being 'altogither ignorant of the Sultans
mind', they are struck with 'great terror' when Mahomet
kills Irene, thereby enacting an extreme form of their advice
immediately after forcing them to recant it. (9) In Goffe's version
of this scene, the key members of Amurath's court are all in on
Schahin's plot to turn Amurath against Eumorphe. As a result, when
they view her beauty and declare that they would not be able to resist
her charms, their claims are not an instance of how readily Turks may be
swayed by amatory passions but rather an instance of Machiavellian
political theatre.

In Barksted's poem, as in all of the versions, Mahomet does
link his decision to kill Hiren to Stoic values and a desire to
demonstrate 'That I can rule my owne affection'. The Stoic
facade of Barksted's Mahomet, however, dissolves into a
kaleidoscope of unbridled passions as soon as he kills Hiren. He
immediately regrets his actions, slays Mustapha (the honourable soldier
who warns him that he has been neglecting his responsibilities), calling
him a 'diuell', laments Hiren's death, briefly
contemplates suicide, and finally out of bitterness devotes himself to
'bloudy warre'. (10) In Goffe, Amurath maintains his
composure, offers a moralistic speech about the foolishness of doting on
female beauty, speaks in a friendly way to Schahin, the advisor who
convinced him to kill Eumorphe, and seems cheerful about moving on to a
campaign of military conquest (2.5.73-82).

As Goffe's play shifts to the military conquests of
Knolles's Amurath I, it demonstrates the savagery with which
Amurath wages war, but the play also describes such conquests as
admirable examples of fortitude and 'noble deeds' (1.5.91).
Even the Christian hero Cobelitz shares the ethic of self-denial and
militarism. When the Serbian governor Lazarus suggests that there is no
point in fighting the superior Turkish army, Cobelitz replies that
'Ease and successe keeps basenesse company' (3.3.16),
valorizing suicidal combat over rational military calculations. Through
cowardice and infighting, Lazarus and most of the other Christian forces
fail to live up to Cobelitz's principles. The Christians appear
particularly contemptible in 3.3, where a drunken argument between
soldiers degenerates into a catfight between their
'Laundresses', identified in the stage directions as
'Truls' (3.3.45, 46 sd).

In presenting Amurath's conquests as simultaneously terrifying
and enviable, Goffe reflects the ambivalence of English attitudes toward
the Ottomans as described by many recent scholars, including Emily
Bartels, Richmond Barbour, and Linda McJannet. Bartels notes that
'while the demonization of Oriental rulers provided a highly
charged impetus for England's own attempts to dominate the East,
their valorization provided a model for admiration and imitation,
shaming or schooling the English into supremacy, or providing an excuse
for defeat'. (11) McJannet observes that the particular qualities
for which early modern European historians 'admired the
Ottomans' were 'unity, martial excellence, and strict justice,
qualities which they sometimes felt were lacking in their own
societies'. (12)

In addition to reproducing this larger societal ambivalence about
the virtues and weaknesses of the Turks, the play raises questions about
whether Turkishness inheres in their nature or in their society and
laws. Although Amurath demonstrates strong passions for violence, his
violent acts are also strongly motivated by social pressure. This
pressure is initially embodied in Schahin, who tries to recall him to
his former royal identity. Goffe also takes pains, however, to emphasize
the power of social pressure throughout the play. Knolles reports that
after decapitating Irene, Mahomet II 'meaning to discharge the rest
of his choller, caused great preparation to be made for the conquest of
PELOPONESVS, and the besieging of BELGRADE'. (13) But in Goffe,
Amurath asks his generals what his first act as a reinvigorated monarch
should be; they shout in unison 'For Thracia!' (2.5.82), and
he follows their lead.

As Amurath embarks on his military campaign, he seems to rouse his
fury by conceiving it as an obligation: 'Our furie's patient!
now will I be a Turke' (3.2.9). Although Amurath has just expressed
a wish to wash his hands in Christian blood, he is apparently not as
angry as he thinks he ought to be, and he encourages himself by invoking
the stereotype of the stage Turk as an idealized Turkish identity to
which he aspires. Similarly, when he is debating whether to stay with
Eumorphe or to go out and conquer, he tries to shame himself by saying
that 'The Christians now will scoffe at Mahomet; / Perchance they
sent this wretch thus to inchant me!' (2.3.50-1). The exigencies of
Turkish piety, then, are contrary not only to Christian piety but also,
at least partially, to Amurath's own nature.

The final episode of the play crystallizes these conflicting
narratives by presenting an exemplary instance of Turkish cruelty that
seems divorced from violent passion. After Amurath's death, his son
Baiazet ascends the throne and offers to share power with his younger
brother Jacup. Schahin again intervenes, however, and tells Baiazet that
to make himself and the realm secure, and to respect 'the Turkish
Lawes' (5.4.143), he must kill his brother--in fact, that it would
be unnatural to refrain from killing his brother. Eurenoses argues that
the Turkish nation itself demands the murder of Jacup: 'Although we
speake, yet thinke them not our words, / But what the Land speakes in
us!' (5.4.177-8). Neither their arguments nor Baiazet's
reluctant acquiescence displays the supposedly natural bloodthirstiness
of the stereotypical Turk. Goffe's emphasis on the force of Turkish
custom and precedent is a striking departure from Knolles, who
identifies this episode as 'the beginning of the most vnnaturall
and inhumane custome, euer since holden for a most wholesome and good
policie amongst the Turkish kings and emperours'. (14) What Knolles
calls an effect of the killing, Goffe depicts as its cause.

Goffe's play thus raises questions about what kinds of savage
behaviour are natural and what kinds are the result of social forces.
Ultimately, it appears that the Turkish predilection for slaughter in
this play is due less to volatile passions and more to the strictures of
Turkish law and the imperative to emulate the idealized Turkish national
type. Goffe thus shows the importance of socially constructed racial
identities in determining behaviour and maintaining the imperial polity.
Turkish law and honour require a self-denial that is conflated with
Stoic virtue but that produces atrocious results. Despite its relative
lack of psychological depth, the play offers a message that is arguably
less racist than Shakespeare's Othello, where a Christian Moor who
is fully acculturated to Western society nonetheless proves unable to
restrain his natural passions. In contrast, Goffe emphasizes the ways in
which social constraints direct supposedly natural behaviour.

The play also suggests that this dynamic is not uniquely Turkish.
In fact, it repeatedly gestures toward universalizing moral statements
in which the Turks are merely stand-ins for humanity more generally. The
conclusion of the play's verse argument presents Baiazet's
fratricide as characteristic of politics, not of Turks: 'Thus still
springs / The Tragick sport which Fortune makes with Kings' (23-4).
Furthermore, Goffe's Turks are fairly invested in many aspects of
Western culture and values: they are Petrarchan lovers and aficionados
of neoclassical allusions and masques. Schahin uses Alexander the Great,
also an admired figure in the West, as the mouthpiece for his views on
Amurath's amorous behaviour, and he cites both universal natural
examples and Roman precedent in arguing for Jacup's death
(5.4.135-40). (15) As noted earlier, Cobelitz shares warrior values with
the Turks, and the Turkish forces appear at times to embody them better
than Cobelitz's own people. Despite Amurath's savagery, his
central position in the play and his love for the desirable Eumorphe
facilitate audience identification with him. Conversely, audience
sympathies aroused by Cobelitz's admirable piety and destruction of
the Ottoman emperor are undercut by his position in the plot as the
antagonist and by the manner of his killing of Amurath, which he
achieves through treachery and concludes with somewhat unbecoming
gloating and mockery.

Thus, the play makes it difficult for the audience to sustain a
rigidly defined notion of 'us' and 'them'. Although
Amurath's actions are stereotypically Turkish in their ultimate
effects, his process of moral reasoning (and those of the other Turks)
disorientingly yokes his Turk-like actions to Western ideologies such as
Petrarchanism and Stoicism. Nonetheless, the Turkishness of Amurath and
the other characters facilitates the play's commentary on issues
that are not merely specific to Ottoman society. The Turks'
reputation for strong, uncontrollable passions highlights the challenges
of maintaining Stoic self-control and manifesting it in moral action, as
when Amurath's effort to temper his amorous passions for Eumorphe
leads to his intemperate passion for violence. Moreover, by associating
the Stoic ideal with the inhuman strictures of an alien culture, the
play dramatizes the difficulty of distinguishing between a lack of
self-control (giving in to destructive, weak, or immoral passions) and
excessive self-control (denial of sympathetic human passions). The play
presents duty, passion, war, kingship, and love as potentially valuable,
but ultimately Amurath's pursuit of these goals leads him to
inhuman acts. The flexibility with which moral, especially Stoic,
rationales are deployed makes it hard to tell whether there is a correct
side in the love/ war debate. It suggests that Turks are driven by a
complex mixture of passion, self-constraint, and social imperative. It
calls into question the moral virtues espoused by both Christians and
Turks, since they are used to rationalize things like neglecting
one's governmental responsibilities, beheading one's beloved,
and drinking the blood of Christians.

In this process, the ambiguity of the term 'Turk' serves
as a pivot point between otherness and selfhood. As the play seems to
use it, 'Turk' refers not only to a national identity in the
world outside the theatre but also the stock character of English drama.
In effect, The Courageous Turk treats the inhuman figure of the stage
Turk as an actual cultural ideal to which the basically human Turkish
characters aspire. This conflation of real and theatrical identities is
supported by several instances of (admittedly clumsy) metatheatricality
in the play, when characters compare themselves to actors (eg 2.2.15-17
and 5.4.99-102). Jacup highlights both the artificiality and the
wickedness of this vision of Turkish identity by attributing his
impending death to the decree of 'impious Statists': amoral,
Machiavellian politicians (5.4.200). In contrast to Eurenoses, who
claims that the land speaks through him (a naturalizing metaphor for
Turkish identity), Jacup sees the conception of Turkish national values
that demands his execution as a piece of propaganda cooked up for
self-serving ends. Like Amurath, Jacup seems partially alienated from
the supposedly natural Turkish identity.

The performative nature of Turkish identity has interesting
implications for the English audience, who can see characters striving
to conform to an ideal that may appear horrible or ridiculous to them.
The epilogue concludes with a blatant appeal to the patriotic
distinctions between Englishmen and Turks: 'All heer wish turkes
destruction our hope stands / That to their ruine you'le all set
your hands' (19-20). Nonetheless, to the extent that the
universalizing impulses of the play itself repeatedly blur the
distinction between the English self and the Ottoman other, The
Courageous Turk may suggest the arbitrariness and constructed nature of
England's own emerging sense of national identity, as well as the
potentially monstrous consequences of enforcing conformity to that
identity.

(8) Othello also displays ambivalence about self-restraint.
Othello's inability to control his passions contributes to his
downfall, but the play's most powerful articulation of the virtue
of subordinating passion to reason comes from Iago as part of his effort
to corrupt Roderigo at the end of 1.3.

(12) Linda McJannet, The Sultan Speaks: Dialogue in English Plays
and Histories about the Ottoman Turks (New York, 2006), 60. The
seemingly labile descriptions of the Turks in the early modern period
(see also Richmond Barbour, Before Orientalism: London's Theatre of
the East, 1576-1626 [Cambridge, 2003], 18) are so common that I suspect
they represent, not the taste of an elite group of authors for ambiguity
and paradox, but rather a typical early modern stance towards the other.
These authors felt much freer than we might expect to praise peoples
while in the same breath condemning them as savage.

(13) Knolles, Generall Historie, 353.

(14) Ibid, 201.

(15) Su Fang Ng observes that 'a line of Ottoman sultans used
Alexander the Great as an ideal model and expression of their claim to
universal empire' and specifically cites Mehmed II as 'An avid
reader of Homer and the Life of Alexander ('Global Renaissance:
Alexander the Great and Early Modern Classicism from the British Isles
to the Malay Archipelago', Comparative Literature 58 [2006], 297).

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